The Colonial and Revolutionary Periods 81available to the new republic and to promote civic virtue and federal high-mindedness.
“Oh! That America! Oh that my country, would, in this her day, learn the things
which belong to peace!” Manly prays. And he shows what those “things” are in the
impeccable character of his beliefs and behavior. A subplot draws a similar lesson, by
presenting another contrast in national manners, between Dimple’s servant, the
arrogant and duplicitous Jessamy, and Manly’s servant, Jonathan, who is a plain,
goodhearted, and incorruptible Yankee. It is typical of Jonathan that he refuses, in
fact, to be called a servant. “I am Colonel Manly’s waiter,” he insists. And, when
Jessamy snootily suggests that this is “a true Yankee distinction, egad, without a dif-
ference,” he quickly responds. “I am a true blue son of liberty,” Jonathan explains;
“father said I should come as Colonel Manly’s waiter, to see the world ... but no man
shall master me. My father has as good a farm as the colonel.” In the “Prologue” to
The Contrast, given to the actor playing Jonathan to recite, the didactic and exem-
plary purposes of the play are emphasized. “Our Author,” the audience is forewarned,
has confined himself to “native themes” so as to expose “the fashions and the follies
of the times” and celebrate the “genuine sincerity” and “homespun habits” Americans
have inherited from their “free-born ancestors.” Tyler cannily used social comedy to
explore issues that were particularly pressing for his fellow countrymen, with the
emergence of a new political and social dispensation. In the process, he produced a
work that answers Crèvecoeur’s question, “What is an American?,” in a clear and
thoroughly earnest way, and with an occasional wit that Crèvecoeur himself could
hardly have imagined.
The urge to point a moral evident in The Contrast is even more openly at work in
those books that can lay claim to being the first American novels, The Power of
Sympathy (1789) by William Hill Brown (1765–1793), Charlotte Temple (1794) by
Susanna Haswell Rowson (1762–1824), and The Coquette; or, The History of Eliza
Wharton (1797) by Hannah Webster Foster (1758–1840). The Power of Sympathy,
the first American novel, was published anonymously to begin with. It was originally
attributed to the Boston writer, Sarah Wentworth Morton, because it deals with a
contemporary scandal of incest and suicide in the Morton family. It was not until
1894 that Brown, also from Boston, was recognized as the author. An epistolary
romance, its didactic purpose is announced in the preface: The Power of Sympathy
was written, the reader is told, “To Expose the dangerous Consequences of Seduction”
and to set forth “the Advantages of Female Education.” The main plot deals with a
threatened incestuous marriage between two characters called Harrington and
Harriet Fawcett. They are both children of the elder Harrington, the first by his
legitimate marriage and the second by his mistress Maria. When the relationship is
discovered, Harriet dies of shock and sadness and Harrington commits suicide.
Hardly distinguished in itself, the book nevertheless establishes a currency common
to all three of these early American novels: a clear basis in fact, actuality (so antici-
pating and meeting any possible objections to fiction, imaginative self-indulgence,
or daydreaming), an even clearer moral purpose (so anticipating and meeting any
possible objections from puritans or utilitarians), and a narrative that flirts with
sensation and indulges in sentiment (so encouraging the reader to read on). EvenGGray_c01.indd 81ray_c 01 .indd 81 8 8/1/2011 7:54:57 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 57 AM